Breathe through me
by kobein
Summary: "One day, it falls upon him, like the sword of Damocles ; every single cell of his being, every corner of his goddamned soul is utterly, completely in love with her. And it hurts." Percy meets Annabeth, and helps her breathe.


The first time he meets her, she's sitting at a table outside of a small cafe he regularly goes to, cigarette loosely maintained by her bony fingers, her sunken eyes (that are as grey as the smoke coming out of her chapped lips, he observes) looking nowhere and everywhere at the same time. She is so, so very beautiful, in a sad and mysterious way that's almost cliché. He gathers the oh-so-small amount of courage he has in him and decides to go and talk to her. After all, it's not every day you see someone so stunning, he thinks.

He engages in an awkward conversation with her, stumbling, tumbling over his words when he notices that her black dress has ridden up her tanned thighs. He introduces himself in between stutters (I'm Percy, and I obviously could not be more lame), and she introduces herself (is there a more beautiful name than Annabeth? He does not think so). She must find him sweet, because she gives him her phone number before leaving, a smirk that's really a fraction away from a smile on her features. He sighs when he smells the odor she leaves behind, one of cigarette and lemon.

Jesus Christ, a fifteen seconds conversation and he's already half in love with her. What a loser he is.

_Line break_

They meet up quite a few times, in between their respective classes at their respective colleges. He is completely and totally entranced by the way her hands often brush against his ribcage, and by the habit she has of playing with her hair, and, one time, his. (She claims it's an accident. He knows better than to believe her.) However, he can't help but to notice that her tired eyes never completely light up when she laughs (the prettiest sound in the entire universe, he thinks), and that her mind always seems elsewhere, her gaze following the smoke that she exhales, as if longing to escape the same way it does.

He asks her about it, one time, by saying "Why are you so sad?" (He regrets his words as soon as they leave his lips. Why, oh why must he be such an impulsive being?)

She laughs in a bitter way at his question, but the fake smile almost immediately falls from her feature, her lovely face automatically harboring an expression of spiteful, sour anguish, her hollow eyes quickly becoming clouded.

"It's not my fault if I'm like this", she says, posture defensive, voice hard, but hands trembling.

"I never said it was. But whose is it?"

"My family's, I guess. They're mean." After that statement, her expression changes to become a hard one, a closed one.

"Okay", Percy replies. They leave the subject alone, but he wants to, he needs to know more. Her hands are full on shaking now, and he can't help but feel guilty.

_Line break_

One day, it falls upon him, like the sword of Damocles ; every single cell of his being, every corner of his goddamned soul is utterly, completely in love with her. And it hurts; it hurts so very much because she is hurting, because he has to look at her hurt, because he loves her. It's almost funny in a pathetic way, he observes, but he is part of that fucking vicious circle and he can't get away from it. He decides that there are no ways to end this other than to confront her, once and for all.

He goes out with some friends in order to get himself slightly drunk (he knows he is too much of a damn coward to talk about _it_, with her, without being at least slightly intoxicated, which is ridiculous and, he admits it, quite sad).

He gets home late, but he knows she isn't sleeping; she's never sleeping. It's simply another mysterious thing about her to add to the list.

He calls her, and every second she takes to answer her phone is making his heart almost burst from anxiety.

She finally answers, voice raspy as usual. He can almost _feel_ her eyebrows furrowing in interrogation; he had never called this late before.

"Can I see you? Like right now? Please." He says, too fast, perhaps because he is so drunk, perhaps because he can't wait to get this over with, perhaps because he can't wait to see her.

"Okay. Come over."

_Line break_

He knocks one, two, three times, stumbles one, two, three times before she opens the door. He is, once again, taken aback by her beauty. She's only wearing a black t-shirt that is making its way down almost to her knees, leaving the rest of her slender legs exposed. Her features are tired, but her chiseled jaw and high cheekbones are in no way affected by her lack of sleep. She is so effortlessly beautiful, but she is so incredibly sad, he thinks when he looks into her troubled eyes. If the eyes really are the window to the soul, then hers is a broken one.

He realizes that he is staring, that he should say something

"Hey" he utters. Gods, he's lame.

"Are you drunk, Perce?" she asks, a smirk making its way on her face.

"Indeed I am", He answers, then carries on: "Okay so this is the part that's hard. I mean, for both of us. I just... gods I just want to know why you're so sad, cause I want to help you so fucking bad cause I care about you so fucking much..." He rambles on for several minutes until she cuts him off;

"I'll tell you."

"You'll tell me?"

"I'll tell you."

They sit down on her porch, she lights a cigarette, takes a drag, exhales, and starts talking.

"My parents divorced when I was nine, or maybe ten. They were yelling a lot. I mean, _a lot a lot_. I never talked to my mom ever again after she packed her stuff and left. Then, three years later, my dad remarried a shrill, mean woman, who could only open her mouth to tell my dad to fuck her harder or to insult me. She dragged my dad into the _We hate Annabeth and she's the cause of our problems _club, and after a few years of that shit I got the hell out of that house, and that's it. There I am."

She tells her story matter-of-factly, her smoky voice not once breaking, her eyes not once looking away from right in front of her. She was still gazing at who knows what, as if not daring to look at Percy, when he said;

"I love you."

"What?"

"I love you. I need you to be better. I will help you."

"You can't. I hurt so much I can't breathe."

"You can breathe through me."

She kissed him then, and he took her face into his hands, and, for the first time, he truly believed she would be all right.

**Author note: **Hi guys, I'm relatively new to fanfiction writing, don't judge me to fast! English is not my first language, so I'm sorry if made any mistakes! Please leave a review, huge thanks to everyone who reviewed my last two stories! xo


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